Was Thomas Merton a Catholic Neoconservative?

Thomas Merton is usually thought of as a liberal or progressive Catholic, which in many respects he was: he certainly tilted left politically, on civil rights and Vietnam; he wanted to explore new modes of monastic life, putting the Western monastic tradition in conversation with Eastern religions; he chafed under authority throughout his Trappist life; he had a strong sense of self, the twentieth-century equivalent of what the Reformation controversialists called “private judgment.” I've no ideas what Merton’s liturgical practices were, but it’s not easy to imagine him a rubrical traditionalist.

Yet for all of that, I’ve often had the sneaking suspicion that, had he lived beyond his untimely death in 1968, Merton might—just might—have become one of the first Catholic neoconservatives. Why?